AircraftNews.Com » Unmanned Aircraft

Reapers in the Region

mgiles — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:38:08 +0000

Reaper UAV

US to Base Drones in Seychelles to Fight Piracy

The United States is planning to deploy unmanned aerial vehicles in the Seychelles islands in the coming weeks to combat piracy. The use of land-based drones is a new approach to deter ship hijackings in the region.

The spokesman for the U.S. military’s Africa Command, Vince Crawley, has said several Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles will be in the Seychelles by late October or November. He says they will be used to conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions throughout the Indian Ocean region.

“We have people going in individually for very short trips right now. We plan to start sending some of the teams that will assist in the September-October time frame. And then it would take a month to begin the flights,” said Crawley. “It is widely recognized that western Indian Ocean piracy is extremely disruptive to international trade and this is simply a U.S. contribution to the international effort against piracy.”

Reapers are designed for long-endurance, high-altitude surveillance, capable of staying in the air for 30 hours and flying at speeds of more than 440 kilometers an hour. They can also carry weapons and ordinance, but African Command says the drones being deployed in the Seychelles will not be armed.

The U.S. Navy has long used ship-based unmanned aerial vehicles in counter-piracy missions. But the UAVs in the Seychelles will be housed at the international airport in the capital Mahe. Dozens of American military and civilian personnel will also be based at the airport to oversee the Navy-led mission for the next several months.

Crawley says the government in the Seychelles requested assistance from the United States earlier this year after Somali pirates began extending their operations more than 1000 kilometers away from Somali shores. Since March, two Seychelles-flagged vessels have been hijacked and several others attacked in waters near the Seychelles and the Comoros Islands.

In addition to the Reaper UAVs, the U.S. military is also considering basing Navy P-3 Orion patrol aircraft in the Seychelles for a limited time. Like the Reaper, the Orion can survey a large region and help deter attacks.

Maritime officials say the vastness of the Indian Ocean and the lack of naval patrols in the area are tempting some pirates to expand their operations further east. The Indian Ocean is considered a safer hunting ground than the Gulf of Aden, a narrow shipping lane to the north that is heavily patrolled by warships from more than a dozen countries.

For nearly a year, the international armada has been successful in keeping many ships from being hijacked. But it has done little to deter pirates from targeting ships.

In the first half of 2009, nearly 150 vessels were attacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia, compared to less than 30 in the same period a year ago. More than 30 vessels have been taken, with ransom demands now averaging about $2 million for the release of the ship and its crew.

Rough weather conditions have helped keep the number of pirate attacks in the region low for the past few months. But as the weather improves, sailors, ship owners, and maritime officials say they are bracing for another surge of pirate activity.
From http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/2009/intell-090902-voa01.htm

Australians in Afghanistan given bird

mgiles — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:43:59 +0000

Heron under retrieval parachute

AUSTRALIAN troops in Afghanistan have gained a major new platform to assist in the fight against Taliban insurgents with the RAAF acquiring Israeli-made Heron unmanned aerial vehicles.

The Heron Manufactured by Israel Aerospace industries is a 26 M span 1500 kg pilotless vehicle capable of remain aloft for over a day and can deliver high quality real time images in the visual infra red and microwave spectrums.
Powered by a piston engine and cruising at 100 kts it is GPS guided and can take off and land autonomously. There is the option for it to be either pre programmed or remote controlled or a combination of both.

The Rudd government has rushed through the multi-million-dollar lease of the one-tonne aircraft to provide troops on the ground with far greater situational awareness thanks to its superior infra-red cameras and other high-tech sensors.

A joint RAAF and army team is operating two Herons from Kandahar airfield in partnership with a Canadian Heron UAV team. The unarmed Heron can stay aloft for more than 40 hours at an altitude of up to 10,000m and offers wide-area real-time video to commanders on the ground, as well as to command headquarters in Australia. The hope is that the all-round day-night capability of the Heron will reduce the incidence of roadside bomb attacks by insurgents, given the aircraft’s endurance and ability to scout out patrol routes used by ground forces.

Australian troops operating in Oruzgan have used smaller hand-launched tactical UAVs for some time but the Heron will be the first high-performance, long-endurance UAV to enter service with the RAAF.

The air force is leasing the new capability via a contract with a Canadian company, Macdonald Dettwiler and Associates.

Close collaboration with the Canadians has enabled the speedy introduction of the Heron into the Australian Defence Force and comes at a time when coalition forces are facing a harder counter-insurgency struggle in southern Afghanistan.

“This high-resolution intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability will enhance the capability of the Australian forces in Afghanistan,” Defence Minister John Faulkner said yesterday.

Senator Faulkner stressed the benefits of a long-endurance UAV in enhancing the security of troops on the ground through the provision of high-quality, real-time intelligence.
From http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26041896-31477,00.html

Remote control warfare

mgiles — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 04:38:22 +0000

Predator console

Point. Click. Kill: Inside The Air Force’s Frantic Unmanned Reinvention

The age of remote-control warfare isn’t coming–it’s here, and not even the Air Force, which made it happen, is entirely prepared. Here, a firsthand look at the struggle to train thousands of drone pilots virtually overnight.
Without traffic, it takes Captain Adam Brockshus about 45 minutes to drive from his four-bedroom suburban home outside Las Vegas to Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nevada. His commute follows Highway 95 northwest through a stretch of the Mojave freckled with Joshua trees and flanked by arid mountain ranges. He trains pilots for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet this desolate drive may be the most harrowing part of his job. Tall, blond and new-daddy doughy, Brockshus spends the rest of his day in a windowless room full of office chairs and computer monitors, teaching 20-somethings how to fly war drones 7,500 miles away. Although his is, for all intents, a desk job, it may be one of the most critical posts in today’s Air Force. The number of unmanned aircraft missions has more than tripled in the past two years, and the Air Force can’t train people fast enough to keep up with the demand.

Predator UAV

Brockshus’s responsibility is to churn out new drone pilots, and churn them out fast. Until a few years ago, most of what he knew of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) came from whatever he might have read in magazines like this one. Operating killer drones wasn’t even an option in 2001, when he was accepted to Air Force flight school after graduating from South Dakota State University, because weaponized UAVs didn’t exist. Not that he necessarily would have gone that route. While some of his classmates were bent on flying F-16s, the competitiveness of such a career wasn’t for him. “For a fighter it makes absolute sense, but I’ve never been that aggressive type,” says Brockshus, whose serene brow could fit right alongside the granite faces of Mount Rushmore in his native South Dakota. “I felt more at home with the heavies.” And so it was that he wound up flying KC-135 refueling tankers, like his father. As his first tanker tour in Mildenhall, England, wound down in 2007, he and his wife were discussing having a second child, and the prospect of another tour didn’t appeal to either of them. One of the problems with flying KC-135s is that the Eisenhower-era fleet is prone to breakdowns, and Brockshus was often diverted to any number of places to wait out repairs. So when the Air Force offered to reassign him to Nevada, Brockshus thought it sounded good. In the short time since he arrived at Creech, Brockshus, now 30, has become one of the Air Force’s more experienced pilots of one of its most unexpectedly valuable weapons, the MQ-1 Predator. Along with its bigger and deadlier brother, the MQ-9 Reaper, these armed and remotely controlled spy planes have generated what Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz calls an “insatiable” demand among ground commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention special operations in Pakistan. It’s easy to see why. At this moment, dozens of armed drones circle miles above insurgents, watching everything in real time, with a resolution sharp enough to read a license plate. Every month they stream 18,000 hours of live video to commanders, intelligence officers and ground troops; they track vehicles, scan convoy routes for explosives, and fire missiles. Unlike the F-16, a Predator can remain above a target for 24 hours, while pilots like Brockshus spell each other in shifts, perhaps watching the sun rise over Afghanistan on their video monitors before driving home in the dark. “They give you a capability that you never had,” says retired Air Force Colonel Tom Ehrhard, a leading UAV expert. “And when you couple it with a lethal system, guess what? It’s magic.” In the end, what lured Brockshus out of the heavies was not the “magic” of bombing targets each day from afar, but being able to tuck his kids in at night. It’s a lifestyle the Air Force hopes will attract new recruits to the job. The spindly remote-control plane that began as an experimental aerial intelligence gopher for the Army during the Balkan wars in the mid-1990s has morphed into a full-fledged weapons system. But with it, the Air Force’s unmanned program has become a victim of its own success. After 9/11, it rushed the armed Predator into service without so much as an instruction manual, and now it’s struggling to figure out how to integrate the UAVs into an increased workload. The Air Force’s current strategy of yanking combat pilots from their cockpits to retrain them to fly drones is depleting other squadrons, leaving the service short of pilots to fly manned planes. It’s also a slow and costly way to staff up. The education required for a pilot to fly unmanned aircraft is comparable to that of earning a master’s degree, and even the best- trained pilots struggle with the learning curve. More than a third of the 200 Predators delivered to date have crashed catastrophically, due to both aircraft malfunction and human error. One pilot executed a hard left at high speed—perfectly doable in a manned combat craft but not a maneuver the Predator, powered by a snowmobile engine, can handle; it flipped over and spiraled out of control. Several other operators accidentally switched off the engine mid-flight. One inadvertently erased the onboard RAM, and with it any hope of controlling the aircraft. “That this was even possible to do during a flight is notable in itself and suggests the relatively ad hoc software development process occurring for these systems,” wrote human-error specialist Kevin Williams of the Federal Aviation Administration in a 2004 analysis of UAV crashes. As Colonel John Montgomery put it to a group of reporters at Creech last March, “We’re on the ragged edge.” After being chastised by its own audit agency last December for failing to establish a dedicated career track for UAV pilots, the Air Force is now jamming pilots through its primary operator school at Creech. The immediate goal is to create a cadre of 1,100 drone pilots, up from the existing ranks of about 400, and to boost unmanned combat patrols 47 percent within the next two years. To accomplish this, 100 airmen will go straight from the traditional 12-month undergraduate pilot training to Creech this year, where they’ll learn to operate the Predator and immediately begin flying combat operations. The Air Force’s long-term solution, however, hinges on a radical new program to train non-aviators for the job and establish two pilot pipelines—one for manned flight and one for unmanned flight. Trimmed of the intense undergraduate training that pilots go through, the “beta” school takes nine months instead of 16. This month, eight captains with four to six years of experience in the service, and with little to no previous aviator skills, will graduate from the abbreviated track after logging just 20 hours of manned flight, versus the conventional 200. Nobody knows yet whether this hurry-up strategy will serve as the foundation for a more efficient, more affordable fighting force or undermine the Air Force’s own ambitious vision of ruling the skies with combat ’bots. The Air Force doesn’t have time to debate it. The final 20 F-22 Raptors, the so-called 21st-century fighter jet, arrive this year, while more than twice that number of Predators and Reapers will also enter service. In May, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates underscored this seismic shift in procurement priorities at a hearing about the 2010 budget, telling senators who were recalcitrant over the end of the $150-million F-22 that the solution to future threats “is not something that has a pilot in it.” Already the Air Force will train more drone pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined this year. Meanwhile, Congress is coughing up an additional $2 billion for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, the agency that encompasses UAVs. Although the Air Force has been invested in the spy trade for more than 50 years, the ability to conduct unmanned and armed reconnaissance is a whole new business, and one it aims to own. Zipped into a flight suit and dressed for battle, Brockshus stands over a trainee slouched in a tan naugahyde chair, schooling him in the art of modern warfare. The setting looks like a simulator, but somewhere out there, a real drone is hovering over the Nevada desert, waiting for the trainee’s instructions. “So let’s see if you can hook around to get a better view,” Brockshus says. Calm though not quite laid-back, he’s mastered the kind of clear, deliberate radio cadence that gives ground commanders the confidence to call in an air strike with “friendlies” nearby. Brockshus and two enlisted instructors deliver today’s lesson as part of Predator initial qualification training, designed to teach airmen how to operate the plane and deploy its weapons, laser-guided Hellfire antitank missiles. They’re in a tight room within one of Creech’s many newly erected buildings. It serves as the ground-control station for the “schoolhouse.” In a real combat situation, a ground crew would launch a Predator or Reaper in Iraq, say, and then hand off the plane via satellite link to a crew in the U.S. at either Creech, one of several Air National Guard bases or at a special-operations unit in New Mexico. Ideally, there would be 10 crews for every 24-hour air combat patrol to cover all the shifts, maintenance, vacations and such, but now they’re running thin at seven. So thin, in fact, that there are no transfers out of Creech, and some pilots have been stuck on the desert base, wryly known as the Oasis, for five or six years (three is typical). To get the equivalent coverage from an F-16 unit, however, the Air Force would need to deploy three times as many people, and none of them would have the luxury of sleeping in their own bed. Brockshus’s charge, Captain Timothy Kile, is a 33-year-old former Air National Guard helicopter pilot from Arizona. He sits in front of an array of monitors, two yellowish Reagan-era keyboards and a trackball that’s mounted in place. One of the two primary monitors shows the video feed from the plane’s cameras overlaid with a head-up display of the horizon, the plane’s altitude and other vitals. Another screen displays a graphic of the plane overlaying satellite maps of the landscape. There’s a joystick too, but it’s mostly for takeoffs, landings and chasing targets. Typically, drones follow a preprogrammed flight path. To change directions, Kile draws a shape onscreen like you might in Photoshop and sits back as the automated plane heels to the line. To his right sits Staff Sergeant William Keltner, who after 11 years in the service found himself reassigned from graphic designer to sensor operator. Although the pilot is responsible for the plane, the sensor operator’s job—to track targets and provide the best picture to the commanders and intelligence officers scrutinizing his feed—is more demanding. Keltner has an identical setup, except that his joystick controls the Predator’s $1-million sensor ball, known as the unblinking eye for its suite of sensors: electro-optical, infrared, video, and laser-target marker. The big, blocky chairs seem like they should swivel, but of course they don’t. This is not a place one idly spins in circles or puts feet up on the desk. Today’s lesson is target tracking, and after a low-key classroom session and mission brief this morning, things are heating up. Brockshus, along with sensor operator Jonathan Oakley, 24, and mission intelligence coordinator Michael Furger, 22, who are both instructors, challenge Kile and Keltner to find a particular white SUV. Information and acronyms fly from everywhere. The rookie Predator crew is, in military parlance, “drinking from the fire hose”:Keltner: “OK, we’ve got eyes on.” Furger: “Copy that.” Brockshus: “When it gets to a vehicle chase, I want a crew that’s nonstop chatter. Stuff like, there’s a butterfly-shaped IR signature on the hood, so when it gets packed in a Baghdad traffic jam—and cars are everywhere—you’ll be able to spot it.” … Brockshus: “It’s easy to get complacent. You have to be thinking ahead of where he’s going to be scanning.” Kile: “I wasn’t paying attention.” Oakley: “And you didn’t mark PID [positive identification].” Kile: “No, I did not.” Oakley: “So what would you do to get back on target?” Kile: “I’d zoom out and use my PID features.” … Furger: “We’re cleared off that target. Stand by.” Brockshus: “Funnel navigation. Always be working big to small, big to small.”Furger: “Any recent vehicle activity there?” Kile: “Let me switch to IR now. I don’t see anything.” Furger: “Any of those parking spots been used recently?” Kile: “I’m not sure where you’re going with this. . ” Stumped, Kile and Keltner glance at each other and then squint back at the video feed, which is full of blank parking spaces. Oakley reveals the magic: With infrared, darker means cooler, so a darker space could be an indication that a vehicle was there, shading the pavement from the heat of the sun. The sensor operator is doing more actual work as the pilot sits and watches. And in the event the pilot pulls the trigger, launching a missile from the wing, it’s the sensor operator who actually tags the target with the laser designator for the missile. It can be a nerve-racking 30 seconds trying to keep a moving target in the crosshairs. Oh, and there can be a two-second delay before the data is decompressed and the sensor ball moves. Oakley says that even though he grew up playing Microsoft Flight Control and has more than 1,200 hours in the Predator, he still finds operating UAVs challenging. It’s definitely no videogame. So what does it take, exactly, to produce a UAV ace? To start with, the same skills required to master any other aircraft, according to experts like Colonel Eric Mathewson, who switched from flying F-15s to UAVs 10 years ago after a back injury forced him out of the cockpit. If that’s true, though, will sending pilots directly to Predator grad school without the full foundation of aviation training rob them of “airmanship,” that immeasurable suite of skills that includes sound judgment, proficiency under duress, and a sixth sense called
situational awareness—knowing where your plane is in the three- dimensional battle space? Sitting in Nevada, says Kile, “You don’t get that seat-of-the pants feeling.” On the other hand, should that matter? With drones, all the information you need to fly is right there in front of you, numerically and visually—the same information a cockpit pilot would use to fly at night. And you don’t have the added stress of worrying about dying. Either way, the beta training is designed to find out. “It’s called ‘beta test’ because it’s a test, a guess,” says Mathewson. “It’ll be modified.” If the standard undergraduate pilot training proves expendable, it’s not hard to imagine a distinct set of characteristics that recruiters might look for in the UAV pilots of tomorrow. Maybe a little less barnstormer and a little more geek. Predator pilots don’t need the killer instinct so much as the ability to switch from boredom to rapid -fire project management when a target is getting away. “One of the things that’s very difficult to wrap your arms around is that we have So. Much. Information,” said a Predator operator and former fighter pilot, Captain Patrick, who would give only his rank and first name because he’s involved in combat operations. “Look at all these monitors. It’s learning how to filter and find and utilize that information correctly. You’ve got to be able to multitask in a fighter, and you’ve got to do that even more so here. It’s harder.”

Brockshus doesn’t particularly love the commute to Creech every day. But when he was still flying combat operations, it served as a buffer between the stress of work and his home life. “Sometimes I’ll be sitting there having a soda on the couch and think, Wow, an hour ago, I was just at war,” he says. A month after he began flying combat UAVs, he and his crew were watching a trigger house, which gives insurgents a vantage over a roadway to detonate an IED as a vehicle passes. Brockshus had spotted two people stringing wires from the house to the road the night before, but that wasn’t enough to go on. This night, however, the figures appeared to pull back a dark spot on the road and crouch—plugging in wires. Seeing that feed, the ground unit gave him clearance to fire, and he launched a missile. He saw it reach one of the men. “It landed right at his feet, and—” Brockshus pauses. “He was gone.” His wife was in bed when he arrived home at 2 a.m. after filling out all the reports. She gave him a groggy hug, said she was proud he took his first shot, and fell back to sleep. He’ll never forget the date. It was his daughter’s second birthday, and he had cake with her before heading off to work.
From:http://www.popsci.com.au/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-08/age-remote-control-warefare-here

Fly by Phone

mgiles — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:21:58 +0000

QUT Unmanned Aircraft

Queensland researchers have developed a system allowing them to use mobile phone technology to fly pilotless planes.

In April, researchers from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) completed a successful flight of a small pilotless plane over Kingaroy in Queensland’s South Burnett region.

Professor Rod Walker says the test was one of the first in the world to use mobile phone technology to send data to a computer in the US controlling the plane.

As more businesses use wireless technology, it has created a shortage of radio spectrum.
Professor Walker says that prompted his team to examine the possibility of using mobile phones to send information.

“Technically it’s possible to use one of these more advanced phones to control an aircraft pretty much anywhere in the world,” he said.

He says they are now gearing up for another test with a manned aircraft in Brisbane next month.

“With the connectivity to the internet you can now control machines and in this case an aircraft,” he said.

“There’s really many other devices that you could control remotely pretty much from anywhere in the world.

I guess that’s kind of exciting in some ways and possibly also scary in others”.

From http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/17/2600455.htm?section=justin

Paris Airshow looks good

mgiles — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:53:49 +0000

Organizers of next week’s centennial Paris Air Show said Monday the world’s biggest aviation industry gathering won’t be diminished by the global economic crisis, which has hit the aviation industry hard.

Organizers expect around 300,000 visitors this year, half of them professionals, about the same as the last show in 2007 — despite notable no-shows such as business jet makers Gulfstream and Cessna.

“This year again, despite the crisis we consider that it is a considerable success because we’re full,” said Louis Le Portz, the air show’s chief executive. Roughly the same number of exhibitors will be present as in 2007, around 2,000, Le Portz said.

The show is taking place against the backdrop of an industry in deep difficulty, according to data released Monday by the International Air Transport Association. The Geneva-based body representing 230 airlines worldwide warned that the world’s airlines will collectively lose $9 billion this year — nearly double the previous loss projections.

Weak consumer confidence, high business inventories and rising oil prices leave the industry facing a slow recovery as the economic crisis saps air travel and cargo demand, the association said during a two-day global aviation conference in Kuala Lumpur.

The show is also taking place under the cloud of last week’s crash of an Air France Airbus jet flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing all 228 people aboard.

Charles Edelstenne, the chairman of French aeronautic industry body GIFAS, expressed the industry’s “profound emotion and solidarity for all those touched by the catastrophe.”

“Of course we had a few no-shows in the parts of the industry especially hard-hit by the crisis, like business
jets,” Le Portz added. “But we sold out all the available stands and chalets.”

Gulfstream said it had decided not to exhibit at this year’s Paris Air Show because it had been present at the European Business Aviation Conference in Geneva last month.

Other big aviation names who are coming have cut back on the size or number of their stands and chalets, Le Portz said, without citing specific examples. “It’s to save money, it’s normal,” he said.

But these cutbacks have been offset by a record number of participating small- and medium-sized companies, Le Portz said — around 1,500.

Around 25 civilian and several military jets will make demonstration flights during the air show, including the
first appearance outside Russia of Sukhoi’s new Superjet 100, seen as key to Russia’s attempts to revitalize its civilian aircraft industry.

Notable for their absence will be the Airbus A400M transport and Boeing’s 787 jetliner. Boeing’s new long-range widebody is going through more tests as it prepares for its first flight by the end of next month.

Airbus parent company EADS has indefinitely postponed the first flight of the A400M transport and is now negotiating new technical requirements and commercial terms with the seven European NATO countries that first ordered the plane.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Paris Air Show, which alternates every other year with the Farnborough International Airshow outside London, 30 historic aircraft from various epochs of aviation history will also be on display, organizers said. The historic aircraft include a Bleriot XI, a plane shown at the first Paris Air Show in 1909, held in the Grand Palais on the Champs-Elysees.

The show opens to industry and the press June 15, and is open to the public June 19-21.

UAVs The Wave of Change?

mgiles — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:07:31 +0000

An insidious changes in recent times in Military aviation has been the advent of Unmanned aircraft. Pilots sit at desks on one continent flying remote drones on another. These can and do launch missiles that can wreak enormous damage. The pilot then goes home to his dinner and watches TV or does his chores. There is the potential here to fundamentally change the nature of warefare with some very unpleasant consequences such as the further dehumanisation of the “target”.
Just imagine how easy it may become to make a decision to bomb a village in Afghanistan because the choice is seen as eliminating a risk to “our boys over there” with on the one hand the saving of noble souls fighting for freedom to be balanced against on the other hand the unavoidable collateral loss of some Ethnic non-combatants.
There is now a proliferating multitude of both big small and in between unmanned vehicles.
Maybe it is now time for some more general discussion of what is being done in our name on the battlefields of the world.
As an example of the capability now being offered consider the KillerBee® Unmanned Aircraft System offered by Ratheon.
The Killerbee is advertised as:
Provides affordable intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for continuous battle space management.

The low-cost KillerBee® Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) is designed
to provide U.S. Navy and Marine Corps warfighters with a previously
unrealized solution for Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft Systems
(STUAS)/Tier II. KillerBee provides continuous battle space intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capability, a 5,800 cubic-inch
payload capacity and rapidly delivers actionable intelligence to combat
commanders.

Design and Integration
With more than 100 sorties, 160 flight hours and a range of more than
100 miles, KillerBee provides the best-value solution for the U.S. Navy and
Marine Corps and uses accepted protocols and procedures. It integrates
into existing and future command and control systems, including
the Marine Air-Ground Task Force, Common Aviation Command
and Control System, Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System
(AFATDS), Tactical Command System and the Distributed Common
Ground Systems–Navy, Global Command and Control System–Navy
and Tactical Common Data Link.

Benefits
Large payload capacity
Small logistics footprint
Reduced sensor-to-shooter timeline
Seamless integration into command and
control systems
Naval Air Systems Command certification
imminent
a blended-wing body
design offers more than three times the
capacity of competing systems
while maintaining a high level of
performance and endurance in its
airframe design. The system has a
low operational cost per flight hour
and a small logistics footprint. A
modular payload design and line
replacement units for maintenance
ensure minimum turnaround
time and minimum maintenance
downtime. The launch and recovery
system can be set up or stowed in
15 minutes.
Modules and Performance
Integration of UAS operator and
support training into the Marine
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron
structure reduces the need for
manpower beyond the tactical unit.
Aviation logistics for KillerBee
and its payloads are provided by
capabilities within the Marine
Air Wing. A range of incremental
capability modules enhances
KillerBee performance, allowing
fast insertion into the airframe
with minimal effect on the pace of
flight operations. Modules include
a laser designator, communications
and data relay, electronic warfare,
electronic intelligence, passive radio
frequency sensors and hyperspectral
imaging.
KillerBee UAS supports a wide
range of STUAS/Tier II missions,
including the Navy’s Recognized
Marine Picture, Maritime Security
Operations and Maritime
Interdiction Operations. For the
Marines, KillerBee provides full
capability as a close-range UAS,
enabling enhanced decision making
and improved integration with
ground schemes of manoeuvre.
KillerBee will also be ideal for the
U.S. Air Force’s STUAS/Tier II

needs by providing persistent
reconnaissance, surveillance and
target acquisitions in support of
security forces. KillerBee, with its
demonstrated Identification, Friend
or Foe Mode 3C capability, has a
clear path toward flight-certification
by Naval Air Systems Command.
*STANAG 4586 is a NATO
specification that allows members
of the alliance to share information
obtained by its unmanned air vehicles.

KillerBee Specifications
Payload Capacity: 5,800 in3
Payload Weight: 30+ lb
Flight Range: 100+ mi
Endurance: 15 hr
Wing Span: 10 ft
Flight Controller: STANAG 4586 compliant
EO/IR Payload: Daytime video, night-time IR
See:http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/rtnwcm/groups/rms/documents/content/rtn_rms_products_killerbee_fac.pdf

Aussie Robot aircraft in Storm Prediction

mgiles — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:22:32 +0000

Drone aircraft used for storm predictions

The U.S. government is experimenting with a new weapon in its quest for more accurate hurricane tracking and predictions: unmanned airplanes.

Like the U.S. military, which uses unmanned Predator drone aircraft to track terror suspects and even attack targets, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is sending remote control planes where it’s too dangerous for even the bravest pilots to fly — into the guts of some of nature’s most powerful storms.

Their Mark 3 model planes have proved rugged in early test flights, and NOAA has high hopes riding on them.

“This is one of the pioneering new technologies to improve hurricane predictions, ” said Robert Atlas, director of NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Lab on Virginia Key.

In a test flight last summer, one of the Mark 3 planes flew a 17-hour one-way mission into the heart of Hurricane Noel, going lower and longer inside a storm than any airplane ever had, said NOAA research scientist Joseph Cione.

Researchers decided to sacrifice the small craft for the sake of science, monitoring its readings until it disappeared somewhere over the stormy Atlantic.

One of the robot aircraft, built by Australia-based manufacturer Aerosonde, was set up in NOAA’s lobby Monday. Cione and Atlas explained the benefits of the airplane to Miami U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who was on an educational tour.

With a nine-foot wingspan and weighing in at under 30 pounds, the mostly carbon-fiber airplane can get 700 miles per gallon fuel efficiency from unleaded gasoline. NOAA now leases the airplanes, which cost less than $100,000 each, Cione said.

NOAA and NASA, which is jointly running the project, have flown into two storms, including an inaugural flight into Tropical Storm Ofelia in 2005. NOAA didn’t use the planes in 2006 because of funding difficulties, but researchers plan to fly one out of Barbados this summer. Cione wants to test it in winds of up to 150 miles an hour. The remote pilot has to belly-flop the plane to land it, as it lacks landing gear.

Manned flights that plunge into hurricanes usually stay above 10,000 feet, as conditions become increasingly dangerous for pilots as altitude decreases. The Aerosonde plane has flown as low as 300 feet, where violent storm conditions are seldom studied.

NOAA is researching the changes in intensity within hurricanes, as is the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

“The energy that feeds the storms comes out of the ocean, and we don’t understand that energy transfer very well, ” Cione said. “Observations near the surface are key to that.”

Ros-Lehtinen’s tour of NOAA was part of a visit that also included a stop at the Rosenstiel School. In a conversation with Atlas, Ros-Lehtinen prodded him on the need to bridge the gap between the advanced hurricane research being done at Rosenstiel, and what’s used in field operations at NOAA.

Ros-Lehtinen said increasing funding for the lab was the “highest priority” for South Florida because of the important hurricane research.

“These unmanned planes can save hundreds of lives by allowing researchers to better estimate the tracking and intensity of the hurricanes, ” she said.

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